Diversity and Boundaries of Neopaganism in the Modern World

Abstract

This paper analyzes diverse forms of modern neopaganism. The author provides defi nitions of paganism and neopaganism that are adjusted for the diachronic perspective. It has been argued that neopaganism as a distinct type of non-traditional religiosity that confronts traditional religions, including traditional paganism, appeared not in the 20th century. Instead, it dates back to the heyday of the world paganism in the centuries before the Current Era. The paper describes boundaries between neopaganism and its environment, including within the folk culture. It highlights the role of state programs for the revival of the folk culture and arts and crafts in the strengthening and development of neopaganism. To clarify its variable organizational boundaries, a typology of neopaganism is given according to the degree of the structural development of its variants. Its variable content specifi cs is catalogued within a classifi cation made on the basis of the analysis of pantheons features in 252 neopagan organizations. A sample of 201 groups from 22 countries shows the dynamics of the emergence of neopagan groups in the 20th and 21st centuries, peaking in the 1990s and subsequently decreasing. The impossibility of continuity between modern neopaganism and ancient paganism is examined in detail. The strategies of the work of neopagan communities against the background of the actual impossibility of establishing such continuity are revealed. The problem of the local specifi cs of neopagan communities is raised, including the infl uence of the cultural gap between the current inhabitants of countries and their predecessors who used to lived in the same territories (e.g. in the USA). The attention of neopagans to environmental problems is analyzed. The author provides examples of the variable attitude of neopagans to the Orthodox Church and illustrates the attitude of the Church to them with an extensive selection of passages from the Old and New Testaments.